This disclosure relates in general to copier/printers, and more particularly, to predicting when a consumable unit has been prematurely replaced.
Many machines have replaceable sub-assemblies. These subassemblies may be arranged as unit called a cartridge, and if intended for replacement by the customer or machine owner, may be referred to as a customer replaceable unit (CRU). Examples of a CRU may include printer cartridge, toner cartridge or bottle, transfer assembly unit, photo conductive imaging unit, transfer roller, fuser or drum oil unit, and the like. It may be desirable for a CRU design to vary over the course of time due to manufacturing changes or to solve post-launch problems with the machine, the CRU, or a CRU and machine interaction. It is known to provide the CRU with a monitoring device commonly referred to as a CRUM (Customer Replaceable Unit Monitor). A CRUM is typically a memory device, such as a ROM, EEPROM, SRAM, or other suitable non-volatile memory device, provided in or on the cartridge. Information identifying the CRU is written on the EEPROM during manufacture of the CRUM. For example, information identifying a CRU as a developer cartridge and identifying the type of carrier, developer, and transfer mechanism contained in the developer cartridge may be written in the memory contained in the CRUM. When a CRU containing such a CRUM is installed in a machine, the machine's control unit reads the identifying information stored in the CRUM.
Some units such as toner bottle do not have electronic CRUMs for specifically monitoring component life. In normal operations the user is informed to change the unit or bottle when it runs out of material. However, some users will change the bottle before it runs out, i.e., prematurely. The reason is not understood. In the case of toner, on the average a user tends to replace a bottle with twenty percent (20%) of toner material contained therein. May be the user has a long print run that they to run overnight. May be the user wants to keep the consumable topped-up. Regardless of the rational the premature replacement of a consumable increases waste and cost since premature replacement discards the remaining lifetime of the replaced component and since premature replacement results in frequent system shut-downs for each replacement operation.
On a CRUMless system, the memory that manages the tone gauge resides on the printer machine, thus, it is not possible to instantly detect if a bottle is replaced prematurely. However, it is possible to detect toner rate of consumption and amount of consumption since the last time the bottle was changed. It is also possible to detect out-of-toner when the bottle is empty.
For the reasons stated above, and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the present specification there is need in the art for systems, apparatus, and/or methods to predict that a consumable has been replaced prematurely.